How to get the best lawn for winter
Better Homes and Gardens’ resident landscaper, Jason Hodges, shares his top tips to get the best winter lawn possible.
With good rain and plenty of sun you’re probably still mowing the lawn quite often. Well, the next few weeks are the last chance for you to get your lawn right before winter.
To have the best winter lawn possible you need to prepare it now while the days are still warm and long and the soil hasn’t cooled too much.
With quality lawns and modern techniques you can have a well-presented lawn all year and one that keeps its colour right through winter.
The reason lawns can look poor during winter is that we have warm-season grasses like buffalo, kikuyu and couch which suit our climate more than cool-climate grasses like rye and fescue which need tonnes of water to survive our summer heat, if at all.
Warm-season grasses’ growth rate slows as it gets cooler and the grass can brown under heavy frosts. The lack of growth means the lawn is prone to wearing out and that’s an invitation for weeds to establish.
1. The first thing I like to do is start mowing the lawn a little higher. The longer the blade of grass, the more sun it can absorb. Just like we need vitamin D, so do our lawns. This also reduces the chance of scalping the lawn putting it under further stress.
2. Look for damp or compacted areas in your lawn and aerate them with a garden fork. Don’t top-dress these areas as you would in spring. Just let the soil dry out a little and allow oxygen to get into the soil.
3. Back off on the watering because the grass isn’t growing as much and as the weather cools, it requires much less. Overwatering can encourage diseases and in extreme cases, even rot the lawn.
4. When your lawn is at its weakest, winter grass weeds are at their strongest. You can chip them out year after year when they’re young but the best way to eliminate them is with a pre-emergent herbicide. If you had them last year you’ll have them this year so a spray before they pop up will keep your lawn weed-free this winter.
5. Most people fertilise their gardens going into spring when your lawn is going to look its best and you get instant reward for your hard work. Going into winter, you don’t see the rewards as much but the effort is well worthwhile.
The healthier your lawn goes into winter the better it will survive it and the quicker it will look good when the weather improves. Keeping the lawn growing will help it compete with the weeds that will try to take hold.
6. Keep the garden beds away from the lawn. Check for shaded parts of the lawn where ground covers have encroached onto the lawn or where shrubs and trees have grown bigger over the growing seasons.
When the days are at their shortest, competition from the garden and shade from houses and fences is problematic and often hard to rectify.
7. A new product that I used on my lawn last winter is called ColourGuard. It’s a lawn paint that is absorbed into the blade of the leaf rather than sitting on the foliage. It has an organic pigment that can last three months in winter meaning your lawn looks vibrant when the neighbours’ lawns are looking tired.
The grass can always look greener on the other side of the fence, as long as the person saying it is looking into your garden.
Written by Jason Hodges. First appeared on Domain.com.au.
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